The customer had embraced the cloud to build and deliver their SaaS product. However, cloud costs started to creep up. A Cloudsoft cost optimisation review of just 4 AWS accounts saved them 24% on their bill.
About the customer
A provider of software solutions to the financial services sector, the customer approached us to analyse and make cost optimisation recommendations for one of their products running on AWS. This product is a platform which serves financial advisors in the UK.
The customer wanted to ensure that the workloads supporting this platform were efficient and optimised for cost, and that best practices for managing costs in AWS were being followed.
They engaged the Cloudsoft Tempo team to conduct this cost optimisation review.
The review
The Cloudsoft team reviewed 4 AWS accounts for the customer. We took a deep dive into the AWS infrastructure and services being used and analysed spend data over a 3 month period to avoid any unusual spikes in a given month.
The Cloudsoft approach also seeks to contextualise the workload and identify other areas for improvement:
- Focus on the top 98% of spend in each account, avoiding diminishing returns in cost saving.
- Analyse each account within the workload in turn and, having interviewed the architects of the application, take the use of the account into context with regards to cost.
- Identify areas to save immediately by reducing cost.
- Identify areas where analysis could be improved to help the customer keep on top of costs in future.
- Make observations which may not directly impact cost, but could help improve the workload.
Results and recommendations
Cloudsoft’s recommendations fell into three broad categories.
- Cost reduction recommendations
- Cost analysis improvement recommendations
- Cost observation recommendations
Cost reduction recommendations
These are areas where Cloudsoft identified immediate savings which could be made by improving the workload whilst not requiring changes to the applications themselves.
- Clean-up of EBS snapshots, RDS, S3 and CloudWatch along with better lifecycle management could save in the region of 11% per month.
- Moving from hourly to annual billing for services consumed via AWS Marketplace could save 3% per month.
- Making use of AWS Savings Plans and Reserved Instances could save nearly 10% per month.
Combined, these immediate savings totaled 24% of the monthly bill.
Cost analysis improvement recommendations
Cloudsoft often sees costs return over time, and so an essential part of the review is to recommend ways to improve analysis and reporting of cost. We also advise on how to start on the journey to FinOps.
Cloudsoft’s analysis improvements helped the customer to take advantage of services and cost data that AWS provides.
Ensuring that Cost and Usage Reports and Cost Anomaly Detection are switched on, and by setting appropriate budgets, the customer was more aware of changes in cost and learned how to analyse AWS billing in detail.
Cloudsoft also provided advice on tagging strategies to help provide accurate cost reporting.
Cost observation recommendations
Beyond cost savings and analysis improvements, Cloudsoft made a number of observations regarding the workload which could optimise it further and improve long-term cost management.
- Use services and tools that can help monitor the architecture and build up data to help inform right-sizing. e.g. Lambdas that may be under-provisioned based on the Compute Optimizer.
- Consider migrating Oracle licences to cloud-native services like Amazon Aurora to ease maintenance, improve stability and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
- Continue with DevOps and CI/CD strategy to improve delivery, security and reduce cost.
Next steps
Want to see how much you could save on your cloud bill, or how you can optimise your AWS usage with operational improvements?
Book your free consultation with an experienced FinOps certified consultant today.
About Cloudsoft
Cloudsoft is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and FinOps Certified Service Provider. We're proud to deliver expert professional and managed services around cloud migration, modernisation and cost optimisation, helping you drive real value from your cloud investment.